Letting Go
by Sophia Banks
Summary: He lived for the care of other people. For Sherlock, for England, for the people he worked with of whom he pretended to be friendly with and otherwise. He didn't need a personal life! – Character study. Rated T for suicidal thoughts. Mild spoilers for TAB and HLV etc.
Mycroft had considered suicide before. Many, many times actually. It never felt very serious though. Just a fleeting thought when he held a steak knife or a bottle of pills that he could easily overdose on (and even once standing on the top level of a very tall building). _"Do you know how easy this would be?"_ he would contemplate and then idly go about his business- as though such a terrible thought had never crossed his mind.
If anyone was to be suicidal it should have been Sherlock. Sherlock was the one with the drug addiction! He was the one that everyone shouted abuse at and that everyone called "Freak". But he wasn't. He had his work and had built up a snarky defense against people's abuse, a lack of caring what they thought of him. Sherlock also had his "friends". He had the ever loyal John Watson. He had Gregory Lestrade and Molly Hooper and the now Mary Watson (of whom Mycroft respected though he didn't much care for her). Mycroft? Mycroft had nothing. Which brought him to the crux of his problem.

It wasn't just the lack of friends it was the lack of a life -what people deemed a meaningful existence. He had no spouse, no children, no boyfriend or girlfriend (Mycroft was by all means asexual -if not completely disinterested in a long-term relationship with a stupid Goldfish), no one that might call –or might call- every morning to talk to. Mycroft had no pets, or friends. No religion to fall back on, or hobbies to occupy his free time. He had his work. And he had Sherlock… and that was it.  
When he was a child he was dutiful to a fault. Never in trouble, never crying, always there if you asked him to be there. If he ever hurt himself he almost always took care of the injury on his own. He would like to believe that when Sherlock was born a purpose arose, which - to some small extent- it had. Taking care of Sherlock when he cried, talking to the boy and waiting for his genius to show through- he was good at that. But it didn't take long before he quickly became the semi-parent (the children were left to their own devices far too often) that looked down upon Sherlock for being so annoyingly stupid. He was the big brother that would tell tales of the coming of the East Wind and how it would take away the unworthy Sherlock, Mycroft laughing in its wake… if he could go back he would (or so he liked to believe), because as soon as their family finally settled, and the two went to a good school Mycroft realized that there was another thing to his dreadfully empty life.  
He was smarter than everyone.  
Early on he was considered a freak by his classmates. Mycroft shrugged it off easily, siting that a freak was less than human, an amalgamation of everything wrong. He was more than those people, he was better! (Or so he would tell himself every night, waiting for Sherlock to go to sleep in the other room before he allowed himself to shiver.) Sherlock was less intelligent than Mycroft (or – to be kind- differently intelligent) but he was so much like his older brother. Mycroft squandered it! Ruined his chance of being close to someone like him because he'd thought they were so different. Mycroft was alienated, confused, angry, lost, and tired… And he let go.

In University he was the boy that you either desperately stayed away from (!) or you never noticed. After that he was the shadow making his way through Government, freelancing and otherwise forming his own position. Sherlock would later dub him "The British Government" but that was a bit dramatic (not that Mycroft didn't secretly approve). With Sherlock taking drugs he had some purpose as well. To ensure his brother's survival, dogged by the never ending fear that he would end up mourning him. He would never admit to being lonely during this time but he was...deeply. He had no one he could properly connect with, or wanted to- feeling too different from the world. The only people he could properly talk to about all that was going on were his parents (who went on about how upset they were about Sherlock and "why can't you help him Mycroft?") and a very irate very high little brother who had a tendency towards violence when lucid enough. But when had he ever had someone to talk to, really? He let go of that too.

Mycroft would sometimes sit in the Diogenes and consider all that he'd done. If the life had lived was one worth it. And all he could come up with was _I kept Sherlock alive and well"_. Or he'd tried. Was that enough? Most would say no. But it hit him one day; knife held loosely between his fingers, that his life wasn't his own… and it wasn't meant to. He lived for the care of other people. For Sherlock, for England, for the people he worked with of whom he pretended to be friendly, and otherwise. He didn't need a personal life! He didn't need to be happy! His purpose wasn't to live for himself but for everyone else. So he let Sherlock hate him, and let people be afraid of him (he quite liked that). He let the taunts roll easily off the tongue of his brother regarding his weight (Okay so perhaps that one dug at him a little, he was human after all as much as he'd like to deny it) or whatever "lazy" path he might have taken. That wasn't the point! The point was that Mycroft Holmes was nothing but a caregiver and a protector-even as John Watson came in and took some of that responsibility away (the man never _truly_ came across Sherlock high and beyond belligerent, so how could Mycroft leave them to their own devices? He couldn't!) and a force that brought cases to Sherlock (and a plane filled with dead bodies for the terrorists to attack. He was still a little bothered by that failure).

Of course Sherlock shooting a man put a damper on his plans at first, because he couldn't possibly ignore that and if he did everything he'd worked for would be put into question by the higher ups and what little life he had would have been extinguished. But then his brother fixed the problem again- or some Moriarty impersonator did. Finding Sherlock high on that plane brought forth so many unwanted feelings of fear, betrayal, weariness… If there was one word to describe Mycroft that day he thought it might be "weary". The one thing he couldn't bring himself to be was vulnerable about that fact. Mycroft's usefulness towards Sherlock, getting him pardoned was his reason to keep going yet again. Just…keep _going_! For God's sake he could do this! John Watson could take care of the rest, he practically begged because as much as he tried he wasn't enough. Maybe as soon as his usefulness wore off to these people and old age (he was secretly terrified of dementia and anything else that might attack his perfect mind) took over, his life would be worthless again. After that he might end it all with something more refined than a sharpened steak knife, a high rooftop, or even a bullet to the brain. Or maybe…maybe he would look back on all that he'd done and deem it a life worth having lived? Then he could be happy. He wasn't sure it was worth taking that risk. All he knew was that for now, he couldn't let his life go.

 _Fin._

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 **I wrote this in one quick sitting.**

 **Constructive Criticism welcome!**


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